Secretary of State John Kerry promises GOP answers on Benghazi

Saying “I don’t think anybody lied to anybody,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry promised Wednesday to appoint a special liaison to dispel Republican lawmakers’ lingering suspicions over the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

Mr. Kerry told angry Republicans at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that verbatim transcripts of FBI interviews with all the survivors had “in an unprecedented way” been made available to Congress, along with 25,000 other documents and security camera footage of the attack.

In his congressional debut as secretary of state, Mr. Kerry promised to work with Rep. Edward R. Royce, California Republican and committee chairman, “to have a review of anything you don’t think you’ve gotten that you’re supposed to get.”

His promises did not mollify some critics, and a head of steam is building behind a call from Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, for a Watergate-type investigative committee to look afresh at the attack and the U.S. response to it.

Mr. Wolf said Wednesday that 110 members of the House were backing his resolution urging Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, to appoint the special committee. He spoke at a press event with Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, a former Navy SEAL who was working in Benghazi as a security contractor for the CIA.

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed on the roof of a CIA annex near the U.S. diplomatic post. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith were killed several hours earlier, when heavily armed extremists overran the post and set it ablaze.

Mr. Wolf said Charles Woods and Smith’s mother, who has written to the congressman expressing support for his resolution, are part of a burgeoning grass-roots movement.

“While home over Easter, members clearly heard from their constituents because nearly 50 [had signed on to the resolution] in the last week alone,” the congressman said. The relatives and lawmakers “along with the American public want to know why no one came to the rescue.”

Defense officials have said no military units were close enough to respond.

Mr. Woods, a retired lawyer and administrative judge who lives in Hawaii, told reporters that the special committee is needed so that lawmakers could “subpoena the witnesses who have firsthand knowledge of what happened.”

“We don’t want newspaper reports; we want the people who were on the ground,” he said.

“Part of their code of honor is they never leave anyone behind,” he said of former Navy SEALs like his son and others who fought to defend the CIA building.

The criminal investigation into the attack has made little progress. The FBI, which didn’t arrive at the attack site until a month after the incident, has been working with Libyan authorities, whose weak central government is challenged continually by well-armed militias in some regions.

The only suspect identified in the attack — Ali Harzi, a 26-year-old Tunisian national — was released in January by Tunisian authorities, who cited a lack of evidence.

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About the Author

Shaun Waterman is an award-winning reporter for The Washington Times, covering foreign affairs, defense and cybersecurity. He was a senior editor and correspondent for United Press International for nearly a decade, and has covered the Department of Homeland Security since 2003. His reporting on the Sept. 11 Commission and the tortuous process by which some of its recommendations finally became ...